A Few Tips for Writing Personal Essays
Here are a few tips for writing personal essays from the Publishing Insights column of the March/April 2021 issue of Writer’s Digest.
A great way to improve your own personal essays is to read effective personal essays by other writers. However, here are a few tips on writing personal essays to get you started.
3 Tips for Writing Personal Essays
- Start in the action. If your story has some backstory, save it for later in your personal essay. The beginning should have a compelling scene that hooks the reader and makes them want to learn more.
- Build up to the reveal. Speaking of learning more, don’t reveal the ending at the beginning or even the middle. Rather, hint at a reveal or big conclusion early on and string the reader out to the big payoff at the end.
- Share a takeaway. Keep in mind that many readers who love personal writing aren’t in it just to read people writing about themselves. Okay, maybe a little. But many readers like to find takeaways in personal essays, whether that’s a life lesson, a memorable moment, or a good laugh. There’s a story in everyone; your job is to figure out how to make it meaningful to someone else.
One More Important Tip
Don’t hold back. If you’re going to write a personal essay, write a personal essay. Dig deep into the roots of your story, how it makes you feel, what the low points were, and the embarrassing moments. If it makes you feel something, then there’s a chance a reader has felt that something too. You can only make that connection if you have the bravery to bare it all.
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This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of “so what?" and “I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
